


edge of the road

by indiachick



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 14:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2697086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indiachick/pseuds/indiachick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For blackrabbit42: Jared and Jensen have a dysfunctional relationship.</p><p>Or, how all I wanted to do was write this thing where Jensen has a huge truck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	edge of the road

Jared’s kicking around a Coke Zero can on the tarmac, and every passing car is a glittering invitation. His legs ache, the soles burning, and he’s walking towards nowhere in a long stretch of nowhere, nothing but slash pine ghosts and trackless waste—but he hasn’t stuck out his thumb. Not yet. Shadows slice across the road in a chevron of dark and light. He focuses on skipping the dark ones, because it gives him something to do. He kicks at the trash thrown out of car windows, the breadcrumb-trails towards better civilization. Nothing out here except the huge moon and the shadows of twilight. Also the birds: big motherfucking things, flying in circles at a distance over what could be a carcass or a corpse. Ropey meat strands in their mouths, and wings like razor blades.  Could be vultures, Jared thinks. He’s never seen a vulture. At least, not the bird kind.

 

Any moment now the next car would come by, and Jared would put out his thumb. He’s decided. It doesn’t matter where it goes: anywhere is fine, any stretch of road leading anywhere at all. Think of it as an adventure. Away from the pines though. Away from the pines and the job at the local mart, away from the rusty old trailer where the water tastes like iron and the nicest neighbors were the couple who chased after you with a baseball bat if you as much as stepped on their dirty, stolen patch of AstroTurf.

 

Cramped, awful trailer park where on good days the air smells of flat liquor and cat piss and puke; like diarrhea otherwise.

 

He’ll need a lobotomy just to forget that place.

 

Lights, incoming. Big as solar lamps, and Jared’s put out his thumb before he can think, before a bulb goes on somewhere at the back of his head. The brakes are already squealing by the time he starts looking for an escape route. Nowhere to go, and already, the truck is stopping. Giant wheels grinding to a halt. Sparks flying. When the engine’s familiar rumble dies down, Jared drops his backpack on the road and just sits down. The lights go off. The birds in the distance scatter, cawing loudly, and the last of the blood-tinged sky fades. 

It’s quiet for a while.

 

“You again. Fuckity-fuck.” Jared says, eventually. He’s not very surprised, he thinks. Knew Jensen would come after him. Jared wonders where he turned around, trailer load and all, to chase after him.

 

He says, “I’m not getting in that truck.”

 

“Fine,” says Jensen. He waits.

 

Jared gets in the truck.

—

 

The diner’s full at this hour, and so is the lot. The Mack takes what has to be one of the last spots, Jensen playing Monster Mash on the radio louder than anything else in the barrens while Jared kicks at a vending machine. Nothing happens. He yells at it a little too, but his voice is lost under the music and the thick gauze of pollution muffling the air. Also, he can just  feel Jensen simpering. But when he joins Jared, still smelling of clean aftershave under a layer of sharp motor oil, he’s got his poker face on.

 

“You ran away,” Jensen says, matter of fact . “Again.”

 

“A-fucking-gain, yeah. Coke, baby?”

 

Jensen completely disregards him. “Like the coward you are.”

 

Ignore that . Jared kicks the vending machine one last time. Gives it up as a lost cause. “What’s in the load?” Jared asks, tilting his head in the direction of the truck.

 

“Hermit crabs.”

 

“Ha, funny man.”

 

“You ran away,” Jensen says again, like the first time didn’t go in deep enough. “You also smashed Joe Garrisson’s head in with a sauce pan.”  Here it comes.  Jared starts walking towards the door of the diner, whistling.  “ And then  his  mother—”

 

That galls Jared. He spins around, smiling wide as he can. “That’s why you’re here? ‘Coz Mrs. Garrisson, the woman who stuffs her face full of killer pills twice every  month, called you to complain about her baby-thug?”

 

Jensen’s unflappable. “The baby-thug  you  landed in the hospital.”

 

“He had it coming,” says Jared, cheerfully. The door swings closed behind him, and Jared heads straight to the counter, orders coffee black enough to carve a path straight through his intestines. “Besides, that place was not very  me. ”

 

“Not very you.”

 

“Yeah. You know those poets that kill themselves jumping into the sea because the sea is their  siren call? I’m that. I mean, the road is my siren call—”

 

“You want to be roadkill.”

 

Jared throws him a disgusted look. He hates it when Jensen’s this way. All of his radars ping, but don’t really read danger, and Jensen just looks at him. It’s a hard stare to match. Jared’s taller than him, but a lot skinnier, and there’s just something about Jensen that’s bigger and scarier than he is, physically. Maybe the time he spent carting around not-quite-legal things in that enormous truck of his. Jared’s just a kid, compared to him. 

 

But he’s not going back to that place. He puts on a long-suffering tone. Says loud enough that the other truckers in this place can hear him: “I was hearing voices, okay?”

 

“Voices.” Parrots Jensen. Jared wants to throw his coffee at him. Instead, he kicks Jensen, lightly, just enough inappropriately that heads turn.

“Yeah. They said,  it’s time to fuck off, Padalecki.  I put down roots, and things get ugly. That’s just the way it is.”

 

Jensen looks pained. He looks around, at the attention they’re gathering with all of Jared’s drama, and he says, “You promised you’d try.” He fiddles with the silver flask he carries around, and grits his teeth for the rest, lowers his voice: “For us.”

 

Jared throws up his arms. “Jesus, I’m not some Gone With the Wind good-wifey to stick to my promises and wait for you on a trailer doorstep with a scented candle. Which we don’t even have. The doorstep, that is. We had a piece of rust roughly the shape of dog-turd—” he trails away, halfway through emphasizing the shape of the dog-turd rust-patch with his hands. Damn, it’s hard to match Jensen’s stare. He focuses on running his foot up and down Jensen’s leg, instead. “And  us , man, yeah, we got some gravity. But we gotta be on the road. I could come with you, on the long hauls—”

 

“You know that won’t work. Two hours of Coast-to-Coast AM and you’re murderous. It’s hateful— I can’t stand to look at you after that.”

 

“Remember when you had all those mirrors in the trailer?”

 

There’s a rush of blood to Jensen’s face that’s just fucking pretty. “I don’t—”

 

“Of course you do,” Jared scoffs, loudly.  He taps at Jensen’s knee with his foot. “I did not imagine giving you that blowjob, precisely because I do not have an imagination  that insanely pornographic.”

 

Jensen hisses through his teeth. They’ve been overheard, in none too friendly places, and Jared grins as Jensen gets up to leave. Remembers to throw the money for their coffee on the table, though. Jared follows him through a sea of faces. He names them. Grumpy Sex-Deprived, 1. Grumpy Sex-Deprived, 2…

 

And then: “Are you suicidal?” Jensen asks, outside, and it’s the first true crack in his veneer of calm. “You fucking—” He makes a move like he’ll shove Jared, push him back against the wall and run, and run, get in his truck and never look back…and then Jensen stops and his hands ball into fists. He turns on his heel and walks, but not towards the trailer. To the road. 

 

The parking lot is suddenly chilly, the space between Jared’s heart and stomach a caustic curdle of anxiety. He sits on the curb.  Good . Jensen’s mad. He should be. This is what Jared does. Be the screw that turns, more and more, till Jensen snaps. And then for a moment things feel real and Jared feels somewhat relieved, like he’s been cut loose, like there’s nothing anchoring him anywhere. Relief, and horror. He thinks of being adrift again, that heavy, tremendous freedom.  It’s a horrifying thing.  Cut it out of me, Jared thinks. It’ll be thick and black and ugly, but it’ll be real, and it’ll be gone.  It’s this yearning, this tangled-up urge, the way you pick at a scab and draw blood when you know you shouldn’t.

 

Roads like spools of black cable. Dark spaces in dark courtyards of empty houses; bloodied toes; hunger and electric wires and blackbirds. No Jensen, not ever again.

 

He’d much rather jump off a bridge.

 

“Here,” Jensen says, a long time later, and Jared didn’t even hear him walk up. He’s got more coffee, and a Coke. He thrusts them out. Jared picks the Coke, and also notices that Jensen has a motel key. There’s one on the other side of this diner, seedy but solid enough to serve any purpose. Jared hooks his finger through the keyring and pulls Jensen closer.

 

“This is not where you ditch me in a cloud of dust?”

 

Jensen snorts. He still looks pissed, but: “I don’t think I will,” he says, contemplatively. “Maybe murder. I could definitely strangle you, one day, with my hands.”

 

Jared thinks this over. “I’ll want your hands  everywhere, ” he says.

 


End file.
